{"id":811402,"date":"2026-10-23T11:58:13","date_gmt":"2026-10-23T11:58:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/811402\/"},"modified":"2026-10-23T11:58:13","modified_gmt":"2026-10-23T11:58:13","slug":"essex-police-officers-joked-about-death-of-paul-hardcastles-son","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/811402\/","title":{"rendered":"Essex Police officers joked about death of Paul Hardcastle’s son"},"content":{"rendered":"

Essex Police has apologised after officers were captured on body-worn video joking about the death of musician Paul Hardcastle’s son in a crash.<\/p>\n

Paul Jr, 35, was being pursued by police when his motorcycle collided with a van near Ongar on 12 January, killing him<\/a>.<\/p>\n

His father told The Times newspaper he was “completely stunned” by the footage, which showed three female constables joking about Paul Jr’s death.<\/p>\n

Ch Supt Scott Egerton, of Essex Police, apologised and described their remarks as “needless, insensitive and unacceptable”.<\/p>\n

The force previously said the pursuit was triggered by a motorcycle failing to stop<\/a> for officers in Ongar High Street.<\/p>\n

Paul Jr died from chest and abdominal injuries at about 18:40 GMT on the A414 at Bobbingworth, an inquest opening heard<\/a> in February.<\/p>\n

The footage was found by the Independent Office for Police Conduct during an investigation started automatically by the death, which found officers behaved properly in the pursuit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Essex Police has apologised after officers were captured on body-worn video joking about the death of musician Paul…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":811403,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-811402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/811402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=811402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/811402\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/811403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=811402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=811402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=811402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}